Snow shoes for tripods

You may have noticed that I have a predilection for snow landscapes. They bring a certain minimalism to my compositions. As someone who has photographed in snow for many years now, I've always found it hard to keep my tripod from sinking so deep into the snow that sometimes it's much lower than I intended.

Gitzo GT5342LS included accessories, no longer offered. Note the big ski-pole like snow shoes. They were 'ok', but not really perfect. And now we have nothing.

When I extend the legs (one of the many reasons why I choose to use a very very tall tripod) I can sometimes get round this issue and have the tripod at the height I want, despite the legs having sunk so far into the deep snow that it is often difficult to position the tripod exactly where I want.

On all my Gitzo tripod purchases, they have always come with an accessory bag that contains the items you see above: alen key's for tripod maintenance, grease for re-greasing the tripod after a major shoot (you should disassemble and strip down your tripod after it being in salt water at the very least and strip it down regularly to keep it working like new).

The bag also comes with some snow shoes. They look a little like the shoes that are at the bottom of most ski poles. I've found them in general to be an improvement on not using them at all, but they are still not ideal. They do not allow me to really get some kind of floating for the tripod.

I've been looking around the web to see if someone makes some decent show shoes for tripods. It appears that this is either a major oversight by tripod makers, or that perhaps the market is so small that they haven't bothered. 

I guess I may have to go and design my own.

Ben Hope, Sutherland, Scotland, 2017

I'm in the far north of Scotland this week. I've rented a cottage and I'm here relaxing and spending some time with two very good friends. There has been some snowfall the past day or so (this is officially a La Niña year - so cold fronts seem to be on the horizon and best you be ready for a cold winter!).

Ben Hope, Fuji GFX 50s, 32-64mm lens
Image © Bruce Percy 2017

I made this shot today of Ben Hope - the most northerly Munro in Scotland. (a Munro is a Scottish mountain over 3,000 feet high. Scottish mountains aren't that big in the scheme of world sizes, but they are beautiful and we like to walk them. So we have given any mountain over 3,000 feet the status of being a Munro).

I can't say that I particularly like digital capture. I am a dyed in the wool Film shooter, much preferring the process of living with the captured image in my mind's-eye, and having to trust my intuition that I've got it on film. Still, I was lent a GFX 50 megapixel medium format camera by Fujifilm for this week. It has, in my opinion, one of the nicest interfaces in a modern camera for composition. Namely: they have considered aspect-ratios as part of the integral design of the camera. All the usable aspect ratios that you could want are here: 3:2, 4:5, 4:3, 6:7, 6:19, 2:1. They can be dialled up at a moments notice by one of the many configurable buttons on the camera body and get this - the aspect ratio is identical in both the eye-piece and live-view preview screen. Aspect ratios are no after-thought on this camera. I wish other camera manufacturers would implement aspect ratios as a major part of their camera designs. At best I often find that they have been implemented in non-standard ways across the entire range of models they offer. Some crop destructively the final image while others allow you to undo the crop to retain the entire sensor area. Others don't even record the aspect ratio you shot in, and many of them have clunky interfaces with which to move between aspect ratios or at best, only offer a handful of useful ones which are only viewable on the preview screen and not in the eye piece.

One of the most important features for anyone when they buy a camera should be whether the camera has at the very least an aspect ratio that suits their eye, and at the very most, a nice interface to allow them to switch between many of the more popular ratios available. 5:4, 6:7, 4:3, Square, 1:2, etc. I would personally never buy a digital camera that came with just 3:2 on it, and I would have to have at the very least 1:1 and also 4:5. I would also reject a camera if I found it requires more than one button press to get to the aspect ratios to change them.

When choosing a camera, aspect ratios should be high up on my list, well before resolution or any other feature as it is the aspect ratio of the camera that either aids you in composition, or hinders you.

I think the journey from the car to the final composition is decided by the use of the chosen aspect ratio. It is in my opinion folly to assume we can work in 3:2 with the aim of cropping to 5:4 or 1:1 once we get home. The final compositions are just never as tight. No, instead, by going out in the field with a camera that works in your chosen aspect ratio can you excel at your compositions. And that is one thing that the GFX does very well.

Before you think that I am giving up film for digital, I would like to reassure you that I am not. I have been a strong believer that if something works : don't mess with it. I love what I do with film and as much as it has its own limitations (it really does, trust me), so too does everything. But I know it well, I know how my film responds to what I'm shooting and I love the process. I just don't get the same vibe or excitement when I have a preview screen that gives everything away. I much prefer to live with the image imprinted on my mind, and with a hopeful expectation of a nicely processed image in a few weeks from the time I've captured the work, but that's just me. Your mileage will vary for sure.

The beauty of the unknowable

I'm a bit run down. I have tinnitus which has been with me for more than two weeks now, and shows no signs of going away. I know it's all to do with stress and working too much.

I did not see this image coming. Pre-visualisation was never part of the equation. There is so much beauty in the unknowable.

So if you don't mind, I am going to curtail my blogging for a while now. Besides, it's really hard to keep coming up with things to write about which have any substance or value. So I'd much rather say nothing at all, than say something that has nothing at the core of it.

I'll be back in a while (not sure when). But I think this is my cue to go out and find something else to inspire and recharge my batteries with.

I do feel I've done a lot this year, accomplished more than I had imagined, and met a lot of wonderful people along the way. It's been a real pleasure to meet so many nice people at my exhibition this summer, and to release a new book,

Plus I feel my photographic style is still very much on the move. Where it is going,... I do not know. But that is why we do what we do: to enjoy the pleasure and the subtle beauty of the unknowable.

Moved by the forest

If I were to sum up why I came to photography and why I still do it, it would be because I am in love with the elements of wind and rain, of feeling alive when I am in certain kinds of landscape.

I've never been one to get distracted by the technical. I really don't care very much for f-stops or shutter speeds, nor for any fixation on resolution or any other technical aspect that leads me away from my belief that photography is about an emotional response; I love it because of what it allows me to feel.

It is inspiration for me, to find a book that connects with the great outdoors on an emotional and also poetic level. In Jim Crumbley's book 'the great wood', he writes so movingly about what was once the great forest that covered my native Scotland. It is a beautiful book.

It is also book that does not use photographs.

Instead it uses beautifully crafted sentences to conjure up a picture of what he feels about the landscape, and it is of great relief to me to be able to jump into my imagination by reading rather than looking.

I need a break from looking at the world in pictures.

We all need time away and we all need balance in our lives. Too much of one thing can cause burn out or for things to become stale. I appreciate that you may get your photography inspiration from looking at many photography websites (such as this one). But I do not.

Instead, I manage to re-charge by retiring from the visual world. It is the contrast of looking at it from a literary side that seems to act as a form of respite. Too much looking at pictures, pictures, pictures leads to everything looking and feeling the same. By reading words instead, I am able to conjure up mental images that seem to be more effective than any photograph could be.

As landscape photographers, I believe that each one of us is really a naturalist at heart, though some of us maybe don't know it yet. We may have come to landscape photography through a love of technical things like cameras and f-stops, or we may have come to landscape photography through an appreciation for the outdoors. Whatever the catalyst,  sooner or later, we all become spellbound by the beauty of what is there.

Put the iPad away, disconnect for a day. Go for a walk in the open air and see what's there.

There's simply too much noise on the web now, and too many distractions with which to fill our time with, and most of it so transient that it will make no difference, except to rob us of valuable time spent where it's needed the most; outside.

Go find your forest, a place where you can tap into your love for photography; It is out there somewhere. Just waiting for you.

Is it a good thing if RAW isn't Really RAW?

It has become increasingly apparent to me, that RAW files are more saturated and punchy than they used to be. When I look back at the RAW files that came out of camera's a decade ago, they were very neutral in colour. That is not the case now.

Shot on Fuji Velvia, which comes with pre-programmed colour, punched in for me by Fuji.
I know this film is highly-unrealistic. It's why I use it. But if I were to shoot RAW, I would expect to have the colours as neutral as possible so I can choose my own colour programming.

I was reading the online photographer only a few days ago while I tried to get my head around the reasons for why this is so. Specifically this article. It seems that RAW was never truly RAW and there has always been a degree of processing involved as camera manufacturers try to get the best out of their sensors. For example, many camera manufacturers apply tonal curves to try to get more DR out of their sensors, and they also apply their own calibration for ISO.

I used to think that ISO was a global standard. One where if you set the ISO of all cameras the same, and give them the same amount of light, the exposure would be the same for all cameras. This appears to not be the case as this article also explains. To utilise the best response of a digital sensor, camera manufacturers set their own sensitivities for their sensors to give the most pleasing result.

So there has always been a degree of pre-processing done at the capture stage. RAW is not RAW in this regard. But it goes further than that. I have noticed that many RAW files these days have saturated colours that don't correspond to the real world.

I have been advising participants to shoot their cameras on 'Daylight white balance' for years, because that is what all colour film is balanced for. In the days of film only, we would always shoot a daylight balanced film for landscape photography. Daylight balance means we retain the colour casts apparent at sunrise and sunset.  

Auto-White-Balance, on the other hand, tunes them out.

Well, It used to be the case that Auto-White-Balance would attempt to tune out colour casts to make everything look like it was shot in the middle of the day. Sunrise and Sunsets would lose their colour as the AWB attempted to tune out their lovely colour casts to make everything look like daylight, and additionally, twilight shots would lose their blue hue as they were transported to become middle of the day shots. This is not what we want as landscape photographers. We wish to have these colour casts as they are one of the reasons why we get up early in the morning to shoot. 

However, this logic doesn't seem to be working with some of the more recent sensors. I am seeing cameras like the Fuji XT2 oversaturate their files. Setting the white balance to daylight does not improve the situation as the saturation is now applied to a different colour temperature and the file looks funky. In fact the XT2 seems to look better if one leaves it on Auto White Balance, because it's the only thing that tames down the over-saturation of the files.

If I choose to set it to Daylight Balance, so I can re-introduce those lovely colour casts that sunrise and sunset offer,  I find I need to desaturate the colour by about -40 in ACR to make them look more natural, less Dysney. That never used to be the case with RAW files.

I'm sure that Fuji are not alone with this approach and I would hazard a guess that most camera manufacturers are souping up their RAW files to give more instantaneous pleasing results.

I guess it depends what we want, and what we all think RAW should provide? 

For me, I had assumed that RAW would mean that the camera would try to record a neutral rendition of what is there. I realise there has to be a degree of interpretation to do this, and also, that manufacturers have to take some decisions in order to get the best out of their sensors. 

I think it's gone beyond this. We are now seeing camera manufacturers give us their own 'look' to the RAW files. Whether that is a good thing or not remains to be seen. Personally, I've always felt that RAW files were too flat, too neutral and that colour manipulation is not something most of us are good at, so leaving it up to us to do that work would result in some very ugly over-processed images (the web is full of very overly processed files). So I think it might be a good thing. Buying a digital camera for its 'look' is just the same as buying film for its 'look'. If Fuji are going to soup up their RAW files to give a more pleasing result, then perhaps that is something to take into account when you buy their cameras: perhaps you buy them because you like the look of their RAW files? Rather than buying it because you assumed RAW was an honest, neutral rendition of what is there.

So I guess I'm wondering: if RAW isn't really RAW, then what is it meant to be? If camera manufacturers are taking control of colour into their own hands and giving us souped up RAW files, is this a good thing, or should we be more in control of that?

RAW isn't RAW, but maybe that's ok?

Tinnitus

I've been recently diagnosed with hearing loss. I have a problem specifically with my right ear where I have frequency fall-off above 4khz. In addition to this, I was told by the specialist that I have tinnitus. Well, my immediate response was to say 'I don't have Tinnitus'.

Mountain cabin, Central Highlands of Iceland, March 2017

But this week, I've become particularly aware of ringing in my ears where I was not aware of it before. Funny how the brain can block out something for so long, and the moment that someone tells me about something I was blocking out - I begin to hear it.

I think the damage happened many years ago when I was a budding musician. Most people who work on music are subjected to sounds louder than is safe for their hearing, and if I could turn the clock back I would ask for ear mufflers whilst being in studio control rooms with loud volumes.

The good news is that I believe that I will become immune to the ringing in my ears as time goes on. In fact I believe I have managed to ignore it,for many years, and it's only the recent diagnosis that has brought the problem out into full view. Given time, I hope it will re-disappear.

Perception is everything. We may not think we have a problem until someone else tells us we do.

For many years I have had floaters in my eyes. I see black spots in my vision when I stare at empty spaces such as blue skies or white snow. The funny thing is that I don't notice the floaters any more. I adapted to them many years ago (floaters are retina debris that cast shadows on the back wall of your retina, and therefore you see black spots).

It's taught me that the human mind has an ability to adapt. I don't see the floaters so much any more except for when I think about them and I can only assume that it's the same for the ringing in my ears. I now believe that the ringing has been there for a very long time, but it's only because someone else pointed it out to me, that I've become aware of it again (bummer).

But you know, I think this is a lesson in perception.

I have been a firm believer that what I see, may not be what is really there. For instance, I know that the brain adapts very quickly to colour casts. When I am indoors in the evening, my surroundings are bathed in a warm tungsten light. Yet I do not perceive it as such. I know I am being fooled by my own brain as it re-adapts to the surroundings I am in.

So if I can't trust my vision to really tell me what is in front of me, then I am more than ready to accept that art is totally subjective. What may be beautiful to me, may be ugly to someone else. So if I am to create anything at all, I should do it for me, and me alone. Anyone else who like's it is a bonus :-)

Beautiful Song

Oh dear, I don't think my Iceland romance will really ever go away. It's just such an amazing place, and the music that comes from such a small population of just 330,000 people (country, 220,000 in Reykjavik) is just mind boggling. Why so much talent?

Here's Ólöf, she has a unique voice. Perhaps not to everyone's taste but I love it, and her individuality. Surely that's what we are all aiming for as artists? Beautiful song too.

The importance of wallpaper

Space in photographs

With music, the space between notes is just as important as the notes themselves. Similarly, with photographs the space between the subjects is important.

But I think 'space' in music is easier to define to a point. With music we often use the word 'space' rather than 'Silence'. Except with Music, space in the music isn't simply conveyed by having silence between notes. Space can be conveyed though tempo and intensity and density (or lack off) of the sound.

Similarly, with photographs space isn't necessarily 'empty areas' of the frame. Although this is can be true at times it is not the whole story. Space can also be conveyed through the use of a pause, something that makes you wait before moving on to another area of the frame. How many times have you felt yourself wait at one area of a picture before moving on?

In addition, 'space' can also be conveyed by areas of the picture that are texturally dense but have nothing of particular for the eye to settle upon. I call these spaces 'wallpaper'. Wallpaper can be texturally rich, may even contain patterns, but ultimately, the eye tends to float over it because there is no one singular point of focus.

If I am to interpret the image above, I would say that the bottom two thirds of the picture is wallpaper. It is texturally rich but I don't think there is one particular area of the frame that I focus upon or more specifically, feel is a compositional anchor point.

I would also say that the sky and water are wallpaper. They are silent areas where there is nothing going on. They are just used to create a pause between the foreground and the background hills. 

Even with the background hills, the black tones and the curving shape of the hills take the eye for a few seconds before we are pulled towards the groove marks in the green moss. So even the hillside is a kind of space in the picture.

It seems a picture can contain many things and yet still have a lot of space. For me, the main object of focus in the picture is the vertical grooves in the green moss on the hill. Everything else is there to just give context and space and although some of this space is texturally rich, it is ultimately wallpaper. Our eye spends just a moment in it, and is still free to move towards the main point of focus of the picture.

Reciprocity Chart for Fuji Velvia 50 RVP

It's been a while since I wrote about this, and I've had a few people contact me about it. It seems that my original posting had lost some of the charts for reciprocity with Fuji Velvia, so I'm re-posting it here.

One of my most favourite things to do with landscapes is to collapse many moments in time into one frame. In other words, do long exposures. It can be extremely useful at removing textural detail that I don't need in the photo, as in the example below:

Removing textural detail by use of Long exposure
Fjallabak, Iceland
Image © Bruce Percy 2017

By removing any small currents in the water, I've removed any possibility of the eye being distracted and therefore drawn to it. Similarly the long exposure has reduced the chance of the sky having anything of distraction in it either. So my eye is allowed to go straight to the headland. 

Using long exposures in this way can remove distractions and allow (in this case) areas of the picture to become 'wallpaper' - regions where your eye just floats over the surface. 'Wallpaper' is an integral component of most photographs: there are always going to be areas of the picture where you wish for the viewers eye to float freely without getting trapped or stuck.

By smoothening any textural details out of these regions of the frame, I can also allow the viewer to see the gradual tonal shifts that underpin the area. For instance, if you look at the water, the tones get darker as we move towards the bottom of the frame and the eye enjoys seeing smooth gradual shifts.

Similarly with the sky I've adopted the same approach, which is perhaps a point on its own: if you have clouds, do you need them? Often I'm wishing for skies with either complete cloud cover (for softer light all-round), or to reduce textural detail in the frame. I will deliberately go to certain places at certain times of the year because the skies are clear of clouds (Bolivia for instance) otherwise there is perhaps too much information or 'things' for the viewers eye to get stuck at. We're back to talking about tones and form. Too much form and we have too much distraction. So I'll often use a long shutter speed to smoothen out the clouds in the sky.

If you're a film shooter - which there is a good chance you might be in 2017, since I've begun to notice over the past few years that around 2 people in every group of 6 is a hybrid shooter (film and digital), then doing long exposures require the need to calculate reciprocity.

Just in case you don't know what reciprocity is, I'll explain. When shooting film, most folk think that the relationship between the shutter and aperture remain constant. They don't. As you get down to longer exposures, film loses it's sensitivity; and the relationship between the shutter speed and aperture begin to drift apart. Typically once you get past 4 seconds with Velvia. Which means that if you rely on your meter, you're going to underexpose your images. So you need to compensate.

I didn't use a long shutter speed here. It was a very calm evening and the only possible textural distraction would have been in the reflections of the mountains. I felt using a long shutter speed was a case of diminishing returns: not required. So rather than use long shutter speeds all the time to smoothen things down, get used to 'reading' your landscapes - watch them to see how dynamic they are.

It's very easy to get into the realm of long shutter speeds if you are shooting in low light or with some ND filters applied. With Velvia, if your meter tells you the exposure should be 4 seconds and beyond, then reciprocity needs to be applied.

Here is a table of corrected values:

4s becomes 5s
8s becomes 12s
16s becomes 28s
30s becomes 1 minutes 6s
1 minute becomes 2 minutes 30 seconds
2 minutes becomes 4 minutes, 50 seconds

And you shouldn't need to go beyond that, as the contrast will get too high and the colours too funky.

Either write them down, or better - remember them. I used to have them on a little laminated card for the first few years of shooting, but the corrections have now been memorised. That's one of the beauties of staying with a single film type for most of my photography career. The less variables I have to my 'process' the more second-nature things become.

Photographing in inclement weather

Cameras can take rain, so long as they're not left in a damp bag for days afterwards, that way they will die for sure. Cameras don't need to be weather sealed to be used in the rain, they just need a bit of sensible looking after, and taken in and dried once you're done. I've yet to have a camera die from rain water. They die because they're left in damp bags for too long.

If you only photograph when it's dry, then you'll be extremely limited to the kinds of photographs you can make. Your photography will only show a narrow view of what the world has to offer and you'll be selling yourself short.

If you are worried about taking that $3,000 USD camera body out in the rain, then you've bought the wrong camera. Buy something you can take everywhere and not worry about. Better still, buy a used cheap body and abuse it.

Cameras are tools to be used. They should never stop you from making images and if they do, I'd suggest you get rid of them and buy something else that doesn't get in the way. That goes for cameras that are too complicated to use, or are too delicate for a bit of rain.

I'm lucky that I use old Hasselblad film cameras. They are 100% mechanical. They are inexpensive to replace if I break them. I've broken a few in my time because of the elements I work in. Sometimes they begin to rust inside due to all the salt air, or the fine sand of the Bolivian deserts cause wear and tear. The volcanic dust in Iceland can be particularly harsh also. But I'm never worried about them because at the end of the day - it's the photos that matter. I don't want to be held back by worrying about looking after the camera equipment.

But before you think I don't care about my equipment, I'd like to tell you that I'm a gear head. I love photography equipment, and I do like to look after it. I just think photos matter more and so I do push them and use them in sandy, dusty, rainy places.

To clean them, I use a paint brush - 1 inch wide DIY store paint brush to get all the muck and dirt off the body. Blower brushes are pretty useless and when you have wet sand on a body, I'll leave it to try and then use the paint brush to wipe the sand off. It works beautifully.

So I do try to look after my equipment, but I also am not afraid to use it either.

Electronic cameras can take more rain water than you might imagine, but if you're not sure, then I suggest buying a cheap body to go out with. If you get those moody shots you want, then I think you won't look back, even if the resolution of the cheap digital body isn't anything close to your new camera.

The shots made in this post today were made in very foggy weather or in the middle of heavy downpour. The rain was so heavy that everyone else had retreated to the car. There was fine volcanic dust being blown around by the wind and it got into my camera bag, and into the body of my Hasselblad. I got soaked and the black sand of the desert began to stick to everything - my hands, my clothing and the outside of my camera equipment.  I was in my element though, as I knew I could not get these pictures of the desert any other way.

Use your equipment, and take it everywhere. Buy equipment that you're not afraid to damage, because it will also buy you  the freedom to experiment and work in all climatic conditions.